


Holler Right in the Middle

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Love Triangles, Nostalgia, Partners to Lovers, Story, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 22:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10931517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: There's a catch in her breath when he pulls out the envelope





	Holler Right in the Middle

**Author's Note:**

> One-shot tag for "One Life to Lose" (3 x 19)

 

* * *

  
"I still love just a holler  
right in the middle of an  
ongoing narrative.   
Pain or joy, ecstasy.”   
—Barry Hannah

* * *

 

There's a catch in her breath when he pulls out the envelope. A tiny hitch and she pictures it as a living thing, embodied and clumsy, stumbling its way up her ribs. It's not entirely pleasant. It's not entirely _un_ pleasant either, and that wins out.

_What?_

A smile gives lie to the single, sharp syllable, and he looms over her, grinning. Holding out, because he knows she's seen it.

_Got you a present_.

He drops into his chair, legs stretched out in front of him. He's staying a while, and the stumbling, living thing that is her breath takes a plunge. A leap and a twirl she tries to hide by going at the envelope with enough force to hide her shaking hands.

_Signed cast photo from Temptation Lane_.

Her voice sounds strange in her own ears. Subdued by a suddenly thick tongue. A sudden tightness in her throat, and she doesn't want him to think she's ungrateful. She doesn't want him to think she's _pretending_ to be ungrateful, because she does sometimes. He does, too, because it's . . . appropriate to what they are. Appropriate to what they aren't.

But she's not pretending now, and when she looks up, she knows he knows. That he's glad of it, whatever else comes of the gesture.

But there's only one thing that can come of it. She'd wonder at the inevitability of it if she could focus on anything but this. Moment and memory. She might protest If she weren't giddy over the silly thing. Over the gesture itself and the fact that he's staying a while.

_Okay. I was nine . . ._

He leans forward, rapt. Abandons his casual pose straight away, even though it’s not much of a story. Even though it’s brief. Matter of fact, because it's her telling, not him. It's brief, and he admires that. He'd never say it, but she's seen the quick, envious smile from the corner of her eye when he's going on and on and she gets to the heart of it in a handful of words.

He admires her economy of language, except when he doesn't, and right now it's a little of both. Because she doesn't keep him in suspense, but she's holding back, and he wants to know.

What they ate . . . _(Ice cream, sherbet, pudding, popsicles, all in endless supply)_.

What she wore . . . _(A thick chenille robe, pale pink and impossible to keep clean, but her dad felt bad he couldn’t take any of the time off)_

How it felt to nod off with her head pillowed on her mother’s thigh . . . _(Rest. It felt like Rest with a capital R, and it’s been so long she’s almost forgotten)._

He wants so much more out of the story, but this is her telling it, and it's enough. Truly enough.

_I'm glad to know this about you_

It's a curious little phrase. Formal and so odd that she laughs a little. His smile brightens when she does, as if he might have been a little anxious. As if he might have been sure how she'd take it, and that . . . matters. The seriousness of it. The plain truth of the fact that he's glad and the delicacy with which he offers it up. The gesture. It all matters enough that her breath gets away from her again.

And then the phone rings. It's not a sitcom needle scratch. It's not Ryan or Esposito materializing from nowhere, as they're wont to do. It's not him or her or both of them being suddenly, wildly obtuse. It's none of those things when the screen lights up with Josh's picture.

It's none of those things when he glances down and takes it as his cue.

_Well. I'll leave you to it._

It's a sign from the universe, she tells herself as she watches him go. She answers a long ring afterwards. She takes a breath, pushes a smile into it, and tells herself it's a sign.

_Hey . . ._

* * *

It's a maybe that Josh will come by. Only a maybe, but she makes ready anyway. Or keeps ready. She sheds her boots and blazer, but doesn't give in to the urge for the worn flannel pants that hardly stay up sound her hips anymore or the soft, baggy t-shirt calling to her from the back of the bathroom door. It's a maybe. He might come by.

_It means we have a chance . . ._

She remembers telling Castle that in the weak, grey dawn. She remembers the scratchy blanket around her shoulders and the careful question from him.

_What does that mean to you?_

_It means we have a chance . . ._

She remembers meaning it. She and Josh have a chance, and she owes it to the relationship to take it. To let the _maybe_ s happen, whether it's a late bite he gets called away from or falling into bed, she owes it to them both.

She tidies up. Unbuttons her cuffs and rolls her sleeves above the elbows. She does the few dishes in the sink and deals with the piled up mail. Bills and unending catalogs. Pale-blue penny-saver envelopes stuffed with coupons, and clammy pink plastic bags with various weekly specials tucked inside. One thing follows another into the trash and she's down to the broad manila expanse of the envelope.

She peeks inside, feeling the still-fresh scent of Sharpie is a little heady. She thinks about framing it. Hanging it over her bed, and the image makes her laugh out loud. The idea of this silly, wonderful, air-brushed, spray-tanned monstrosity in with the exposed brick and distressed wood of her room. The glossy oblong side by side with the sepia-toned line drawings with their furry, good-paper edges.

She laughs out loud, but she's careful with it. Reverent as she moves suddenly, swiftly to the book case. She slides the envelope between two tall folios. Tugs one a little out from the edge so she can find it when she wants it. When she finds the right home for it. She tucks it away, then goes on her knees for the battered foot locker on the bottom shelf.

She's half-surprised to find them, though there's nowhere else they'd be. Nowhere else they've been since she'd splurged to have them digitized. She'd had to weather her dad's wordless worry over it all when she'd caught a sudden bug to haul the VHS tapes out of storage in his attic. There's nowhere else they've been, but now she's holding one disc gingerly by its silver sides and setting it in the tray.

She's curling her head on her arm and drawing her knees up almost her chest as the sonorous voice glides through the spoken word intro. She's lost in it as the theme song swells, and the title fills the screen.

_Welcome to . . . Temptation Lane._

 

* * *

 

_Kate._

A long pause. Patient. Strange.

_Kate._

"Hate when you call me that," she grumbles and flops on to her back. Groans outright at the cool air outside of her face-plant cocoon.

"You prefer Katherine?" The retort comes with a low chuckle, smooth and unfamiliar. Disorienting.

She shoots bolt upright, her hand sliding to her bare hip. "Josh!"

"You were expecting someone else?" He holds up a single key, more than a little proud of it.

She remembers pressing it into his hand. She remembers the maybe of him coming by and the fact that they have a chance. But she remembers a more familiar voice, too.

_Katherine Beckett. I never._

"You," she says with too much force. Too bright a smile. She scrubs her hands over her face. Scrubs it away. "Just you."

"What's this?" He reaches for the remote, stabbing for the volume button. "That soap opera. I thought you closed the case?"

"We did." It comes out flat. More closed off than it should, though he doesn't seem bothered by it. He doesn't seem to need an explanation, but she finds herself giving one anyway. Making amends for something. "I used to watch."

"You did?"

He turns swiftly toward the screen. A woman's face in close-up. A wild-eyed man bending her back. Melodramatic music swelling, even though he's turned the sound down to almost nothing.

"Used to," she laughs. She reaches for the remote in a that's-the-end-of-that gesture, but he stays her hand.

"Junior high?" It's a question, but it's not. He corrects himself. "Earlier. Middle school, maybe." He nods, satisfied with his own answer. "And high school again." He gives her a sly look. "I can see the appeal."

He hits pause. He captures the woman's glossy hair swinging away from the camera, a unified, heavy movement. Artificial. He captures the man, clenched teeth and bulging eyes. Ridiculous.

"Camp. It's all so over the top," he says. He rises from his knees to slide next to her on the couch. He surrounds her, his voice low and smooth. Chuckling. "I can see the appeal."

"Camp," she echoes, and it sounds like a lie. It is a lie, but she gets away with it. "Yeah."

* * *

 

It shouldn't bother her. It shouldn't draw her from her own bed, when it's rare enough Josh is spending the night. But it does.

She slips into the worn flannel pants after all. She raises her arms high in the dark and lets the thin material of t-shirt settle on her shoulders. She pads barefoot from the bedroom to the hall. She skims a palm over her laptop on the high back of the couch, thinking at first that's what she's after. An episode to send her off to sleep. A snippet with her earbuds in.

But the bothered, sleep-deprived part of her has other ideas. It carries her to the bookshelf. To a run of dark covers conspicuously inconspicuous more than halfway down the wall. She stoops to drag a fingertip along them, connecting the dots between the tall, bold _C_ on each.

She thinks about Peter Connelly's boast. Two-hundred fifty episodes, for however many years it's been, and the hundred, hundred, hundred stories weaving in and out of every one. She doesn't count the dark spines. She doesn't try to recall how many times she's read each one. A different story every time. 

She gropes blindly on the ottoman for the folder of discs. Silently retrieves the last one in the player and slips it in with the rest. She closes the battered old footlocker reverently and thinks she'll go back to bed, then.

But the bothered, sleep-deprived part of her has other ideas. She draws her knees up falls back, burrowing into the couch. Family trees run through her mind. Absurd, harrowing plots that left her white-knuckled every Friday. Lists of who's related to whom and how. All the things she loved before, during, and after the story she told. All the things she loved alongside her mother and beyond. That she still loves, if she's honest with herself.

She's not honest with herself, bothered and sleep-deprived as she is, but a line of real-life dialogue interrupts the stream of memory. The stream of reflection. A line of real-life dialogue and another, both entirely out of place, as she finally drops off to sleep.

_I'm glad to know this about you_

_I'm here for the story_

**Author's Note:**

> Beckett has issues with soap operas. And she knows Llanview is totally not made up.


End file.
